BH wrist power

blahness wrote: Just practiced with most probably one of the best players in the club I play at (a double inverted player). His compact no-nonsense BH is just amazing, just a small flick of the wrist and he sends the ball absolutely flying with so much spin and speed. I think I have a similar stroke structure but the power I generate is probably 3 levels lower lol... he just has such impeccable timing with his whole body all concentrated into that singular moment, which I don't have right now.  Just a reminder to self that the ball doesn't really care what you do before and after your stroke, it only feels the force at the precise moment when you contact it.

There is likely a subtle but critical difference in his compact BH stroke that generates signicantly more power than yours, my guess would be that his power stroke begins with his wrist bent well farther back with the paddle tip pointing back more towards the chest, this wrist cocking or loading motion allows the the elbow motion to fully "crack the whip" and deliver maximum power. If you are starting your BH stroke with the paddle tip more parallel to your chest you will not get nearly as much power on the shot.

There are some good videos on PingSkills that demonstrate this well.

Tinykin wrote: heavyspin wrote: blahness wrote: Just a reminder to self that the ball doesn't really care what you do before and after your stroke, it only feels the force at the precise moment when you contact it.  Following through after contact is consequence of hitting with big force. No follow through requires the stroke to decelerate to a stop, so the force would be weak at contact.    I used to think similarly. Then I noticed that advanced players' strokes were getting shorter with little follow through but the resulting shot had the same or greater effect on the ball. There's a Japanese coach on YouTube that explains it. the stroke is shorter but it doesn't come to a sharp stop. There is this big vibration at the end of the stroke that I suppose makes up for the long follow through. Had a look but can't find the video.

I was going to say the same thing but I didn't want to not pick heavyspin's correct point.

It's basically like cracking a whip where there is a recoil at the end of the snap. So there is a quick pass through the ball and a recoil at the end of the stroke.

What heavy spin means is that you shouldn't deliberaly try to stop the motion short.     You could stop the elbow and less the wrist pass through but there must be a sort of pass through and likely recoil for the stroke to be maximally powerful.